The Microbiology of Nuclear Waste Disposal

The Microbiology of Nuclear Waste Disposal is a state-of-the-art reference featuring contributions focusing on the impact of microbes on the safe long-term disposal of nuclear waste. This book is the first to cover this important emerging topic, and is written for a wide audience encompassing regulators, implementers, academics, and other stakeholders. The book is also of interest to those working on the wider exploitation of the subsurface, such as bioremediation, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy, and water quality.

Planning for suitable facilities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia has been based mainly on knowledge from the geological and physical sciences. However, recent studies have shown that microbial life can proliferate in the inhospitable environments associated with radioactive waste disposal, and can control the long-term fate of nuclear materials. This can have beneficial and damaging impacts, which need to be quantified.

Encompasses expertise from both the bio and geo disciplines, aiming to foster important collaborations across this disciplinary divide Includes reviews and research papers from leading groups in the fieldProvides helpful guidance in light of plans progressing worldwide for geological disposal facilitiesIncludes timely research for planning and safety case development

1. Introduction
2. Waste types and national inventories
3. Analogue sites
4. Deep subsurface baseline geomicrobiology
5. Molecular techniques for understanding microbial abundance and activity in wasteforms
6. Organic materials and their microbial fate in radioactive waste
7. Microbial impacts on gas production in ILW; Finnish perspective
8. Halophilic microbial metabolism and impact on radwaste disposal in salt deposits
9. ILW and the biobarrier concept
10. Microbial transformations of radionuclides in radwaste
11. Bentonite geomicrobiology
12. Modeling approaches to support safety case development
13. Microbial production and metabolism of hydrogen in GDFs
14. Stakeholder engagement; communicating microbial impacts on radwaste to key stakeholders